AustLit

'During the devastating bushfires of 2020, a few seconds of footage became emblematic of the limitations of the Australian Prime Minister. In The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, Sean Kelly recounts the moment: Morrison was visiting a bushfire-afflicted town and approached a firefighter who told him, ‘I don’t really want to shake your hand.’ ‘Morrison moved his hand to the man’s left hand and grabbed it, appearing to move it slightly, then walked on to the next person.’ This apparent Morrisonian malfunction was shocking as an instance of thoughtless disrespect, but it was, Kelly believes, congruent with his approach to public life. More recently, Australian of the Year Grace Tame was subjected to Morrison’s strategic obliviousness, when her pained expression, as the Prime Minister shook her hand and posed for a photograph at a pre-Australia Day event, was made only more conspicuous by his resolutely blank grin, the face of a man unequipped to acknowledge or negotiate anything other than total compliance. Morrison behaves like this because he takes his task to be the arranging of images that will be seen by millions of potential voters, with every action in service of selling himself to that public. Therefore, the individual before him, the firefighter or the advocate for survivors of sexual assault, is erased.' (Introduction)